


Prelude for a Fantasy in E♭Major

by SaffieUnseelie



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Mythology, Alternate Universe, My First AO3 Post, Origin Story, Original Fiction, world mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 14:47:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23713183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaffieUnseelie/pseuds/SaffieUnseelie
Summary: An alternate introductory myth that allows for everything to be real. Think Galadriel narrating the opening of the Fellowship of the Ring movie. I wrote this because I was writing a story where I needed angels and vampires to exist in the same universe. I hope you enjoy it, it's the first thing I've ever published online.





	Prelude for a Fantasy in E♭Major

Thousands upon thousands of years ago, wells of magic existed throughout the cosmos, and everything was real. The upwelling of magic fuelled the evolution of strange and fantastic creatures – everything from great dragons to firebirds to microscopic diseases that caused infections of bloodlust and prophecy. And there were beings, at the beginning of everything, powerful beings born of pure magic, whom we would now call gods, or goddesses, or perhaps angels. Nobody knows from where they came, but they were undeniably the greatest of the magical creatures to walk the earth. There were the mother-goddesses of soil and tree, whose potent magic flowed through the bedrock of the planet itself. There were beings of fire and sunlight, who flew through the air on great feathered wings, and sea gods dwelling in the deepest crevices of the ocean. There were maiden goddesses who ran through the woods guiding vast herds of creatures in their migrations, gods who took the form of swarms of bees and creeping seas of vines, and gods who led the first humans on their journeys across the ice floes and grasslands. The offspring of humans and these kind gods were the Faeries, an ever-changing race who linked themselves to the inherent magic of the Earth, and learned to populate those folds in time and space where magic collected like backeddies on a river. For millennia, magic was a force on Earth as elemental as the currents of wind or the sweep of the tides, omnipresent and binding.

But it did not remain so forever. The gods and great beings, who were capable of drawing from the wells of magic, saw that each of them were allotted a certain measure of power they could access at no cost – no more and no less than they were able to handle. But not all gods were capable of the same capacity, and some began to grow jealous of the greatest ones, for they did not understand that their sisters were equipped to handle such power, and that they were set limits in order to maintain balance. Many of them felt they should be able to draw as much power as they liked, regardless of their natural capacity. And when they realized there were ways around those limits, the gods began to delve into the wells of magic in order to increase their own power. 

There was a price for such things, of course, and the cost was always steep and merciless. Some of the gods fought and killed each other in their quest for more power, feeding on the magic of those they’d slain. Some gods cleaved to humans, strengthened from the magic generated by worship – but sealing themselves to a terrible fate lest they be forgotten. Sects of gods fought bitter wars, demonizing their enemies despite once having been as similar as the two wings of a bird. And some gods drowned themselves in the wells of magic, losing their ability to take on an earthly form. It took a long time, but eventually, there was barely any left who had not in some way tried to augment their own power – those who didn’t seemed weak as kittens next to their mighty brothers and sisters. 

Thousands upon thousands of years ago, there came a time when the wells of magic ran dry and were sealed. It had seemed an impossibility, at the beginning of days, when magic was as common as the air in our lungs. But it happened nonetheless. 

There was still magic on the Earth, yes, but there was no longer a source for that seamless meshing of energy and matter that was its essence. Magic had created all it would create, and from that time forward, no new deity or magical creature evolved. The gods still held great power, but never again did they reach the heights of the times before the sealing. The magical creatures became rarer, confined to increasingly isolated habitats. The Faeries lived on in the pocket realms of the world, their strength tied as always to the land, but there were no more unions between gods and men to strengthen their race, and as their physical blood thinned, faerie children became as precious as a river of diamonds. Magic could be transferred from parent to child, through gifts and infections, but it became a resource like any other – a finite resource. Humans lost sight of it, as the magical races clung fiercely to their power, unwilling to teach this rapidly expanding species their secrets lest magic become more diluted than it already was. As they grew apart, magic became something to be feared, and the humans constructed systems of belief to drive that wedge even deeper between themselves and the users of magic. And without the magic of worship, the gods dwindled – though they could not be killed, they were drained by the prices they were forced to pay, sapping their powers and dimming their light and their beauty. 

Thousands upon thousands of years ago, the force of magic deserted this earth – perhaps forever, perhaps only until it has renewed itself. Its remnants can be found in the small populations of creatures who are still able to channel that force, in the pocket-realms of the Faeries and the kraken in the deepest trenches of the sea. Humans may be born with the second sight, a tree may attract a dryad, a god might wander the Earth for a time. But the great wells of magic are gone, though they were once part of the very fabric of our world. Though we have never ceased looking for magic, today, it is only found in storybooks, lost now to memory and time.


End file.
